Tuesday, May 31, 2011

There is news from Cubic Platforms that the dual-core HTC Sensation smartphone will be made available to Malaysia from 1 June 2011.

The HTC Sensation put emphasis on its multimedia capability, plays video and music with SRS virtual surround sound, and able to record full HD video with stereo sound. Its official retail price is RM2,299, slightly higher than the HTC Desire HD.

Specification:

4.3-inch Super LCD with qHD (540 x 960) resolution

1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM 8260 Snapdragon processor

Adreno 220 GPU

Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) OS

HTC Sense v3.0 UI

1 GB internal storage, 768 MB RAM

8 MP main camera with dual-LED flash

VGA front camera

Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP

Comes with 8 GB microSD card

1520 mAh Li-ion battery

You may be able to see it at Cubic Platforms, Sunway Giza, Kota Damansara.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

The OTA (Over-The-Air) Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) of HTC Incredible S smartphone has been made available to Malaysia today (26 May 2011) morning.

You can manually check for the update now, or wait for the automated update alert appear on your HTC Incredible S smartphone sooner or later.

Although this update will not cause any data or setting lost to your smartphone, it is always a wise choice to perform a backup using tools such as MyBackup (or the paid MyBackupPro) or Titanium Backup (or the paid Titanium Backup Pro) prior to the update, just in case...

Before the update, my HTC Incredible S is running on Android 2.2.1 (Froyo) software number 1.38.707.1.

After the update, it is now running on Android 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) software number 2.12.707.5 with HTC Sense 2.1 (sadly, not the newer 3.0 yet).

Manual update is pretty easy. Just go to Settings > About phone > Software updates and click on the "Check now" button. You should be able to get the update notification as below.

After the download, you'll come to a confirmation screen to apply the update to your phone.

If you answer OK to Install now, your phone will be rebooted and the update process will begin. It takes a while to complete. Then the phone will reboot again, and your phone is now powered with Android Gingerbread!

Friday, May 20, 2011

Since SiS Corporation is the sole distributor of HTC smartphones in Malaysia, the HTC phones imported by SiS to Malaysia and under their warranty are generally called "genuine original set". Those imported by other vendors, not going through the official HTC distribution channel, and not under HTC/SiS warranty (probably warranty by the import vendors themselves), are generally called "AP set".

Because there is a price difference between genuine original set and AP set, if you are buying a genuine original set (which is normally more expensive than AP set), you might want to check if your HTC smartphone is really a genuine original set, officially supported and warranty by HTC through SiS.

You might also want to ensure that you are getting a brand new unopened set, instead of otherwise a display set, etc.

Here is the way to check it. A new HTC genuine original set must fulfil all the criteria below:

The packaging box should be sealed with SiS sticker (photo as below)

The phone's serial no. and IMEI no. should be the same as printed on the box and at the back of the phone (in battery compartment)

Thursday, May 12, 2011

I have been subscribing to Dynaquest's Monthly Digest for years, and have been using it to shortlist and analyse my stock picks. It is sad to know that this publication will come to an end.

Founded by Dr Neoh Soon Kean (梁孙健), Dynaquest has been publishing precious fundamental analysis information of the Malaysian stock market, including the Stock Performance Guide (SPG), the Second Board Guide (SBG, which has ceased publication few years ago), Monthly Digest and the expensive Stockbase.

Contents of Monthly Digest includes:

Summary of marketwide information

Ranking of companies by PER & DY

Ranking by discount to NAB/Share

Ranking by Market Capitalisation

Ranking by combination of PER, DY, PX/NAB and ROE

Valuation of TSR and warrant

Valuation of REITs

Dynaquest's selected stocks

EMAS index vs Sectoral indices

EMAS index vs Major Global indices

Entitlements information

Summary of updates for the month

Financial statistics

Weekly price charts

Although there are a few competitors to this publication, those competitors are yet to close up the gap in getting close to Monthly Digest's comprehensiveness, up-to-date info, detail and usefulness.

After installation, you can find Ubuntu Tweak inside the System category of Applications. Click the Applications launcher on the side bar of Ubuntu 11.04 Unity Desktop, drop down the search selector which default to All Applications and select System. Alternatively, you can search for "Ubuntu Tweak" by key-in its name in the application search box.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Deloitte has released their annual Technology Trends report for 2011, taglined "The natural convergence of business and IT".

This report examines the ever-evolving landscape of technology put to business use. Although it is written from the perspective of the CIO, it also informs business executives on exciting new possibilities to apply technology to address their most pressing business challenges.

10 important trends were identified in this report, clustered in 2 categories.

1. (Re)Emerging Enablers are trends that many CIOs and technology executives have spent time, thought and resources on in the past.

They are:

Visualization

"Almost-Enterprise" Applications

Cyber Intelligence

CIOs as Revolutionaries

The End of the "Death of ERP"

2. Disruptive Deployments are trends that present significant new opportunities to improve business processes, rethink operations or even enter into new business models. The technologies themselves are not necessarily disruptive, but when when deployed, could disrupt the cost, capabilities, or even the core operating model of IT and the business.

They are:

Real Analytics

Social Computing

User Engagement

Applied Mobility

Capability Clouds

Among the list, the convergence of Social and Mobile computing plays significantly.

Monday, May 2, 2011

The newly released Ubuntu Linux 11.04 has a new default Unity Desktop interface, which brings different experience from the classic GNOME Desktop in all its previous releases which you are already familiar with.

If you dislike this new Unity Desktop for whatever reason, here is the easy way for you to revert back to the Ubuntu classic desktop.

When you are at the Ubuntu login screen, click on the user to login, and you will be able to see the taskbar at the bottom of the screen as shown below. One of the item on the taskbar is the session selector.

Change the session from the default "Ubuntu" to "Ubuntu Classic" and proceed with the login, your desktop will now changed from the new Unity Desktop to the traditional Ubuntu GNOME Desktop. You just need to apply this setting once, and it will be the default for all subsequence login.

If your Ubuntu is set to automatically login the default user, you can get to the login screen by logout the user.

Its default desktop interface is a new Unity Desktop instead of the traditional GNOME Desktop. The experience is now more Macintosh alike. You can notice the sidebar on its left, which doesn't found in previous version of Ubuntu. It took me a while to figure out where to access to my favourite applications in this new desktop.

The default office productivity suite has also shifted from OpenOffice.org to LibreOffice.